Monday, August 24, 2009

General maintenance tips for computer - Software

We always wonder as to what happened to our computer that used to run like a sprinter when we had purchased it. Now it seems to have lost its touch of running at the same pace. Luckily we can do certain things without spending a dime on computer maintenance to make it as good as new ready to fire up and work as it used to do when we purchased it.

Some tips to keep in mind while performing maintenance on your computer.

1. Take off the power supply cord while cleaning any inside parts of the CPU as the components can hold on to some electric charges and may discharge by giving you a slight shock. Do not try to remove the monitor covering as the CRT monitors hold on to a very high voltage even after removing all the power cables and can be hazardous if touched by bare hands. It is always better to let the professional technicians to take care of the monitor.

2. Use a dry cloth instead of vacuum cleaner to clean the inside of CPU. The insides can also be cleaned by blowing compressed air into the components, but this can lead to blocks due to microscopic particles entering the components. Just cleaning the upper layers with a dry cloth is all that is needed.

3. Usually most of the dirt is found in the fans which are found on SMPS (the back of the CPU) and the one which is over the processor. You can detach both these fans and clean their blades. The processor fan also has a heatsink which is required to absorb the excess heat from the processor. Detach both the fan and heatsink and clean the partitions of the heatsink.

4. If there are a lot of cables in the inside of the CPU, there is a possibility that these cluttered wires are causing the restriction for free flow of data from one component to another. This will ultimately lead to slowing up of your pc. Sorting out every wire by detaching and reattaching can help a lot. Usually the data cables take up most of the space inside the CPU. The extra cable can be folded and pushed towards the free space in the CPU cabinet to free some space.

5. Check whether all the components like the memory card, video card, network card etc are placed properly into their slots. Sometimes due to partial placement of these components the computer can work erratically thereby slowing down and hanging the applications. Removing these cards from their slots and cleaning them superficially with a dry cloth can help a lot. Also check whether the data cables are placed properly and completely onto both the IDE(Primary and Secondary) channels on the motherboard.